A report from Albany Med, 40 years later

Last February, I remembered and memorialized a major tragedy in my family’s history. On February 20, 1970, my grandfather – along with my three younger siblings – was driving through the town of Nassau when he lost control of the vehicle and crashed in a single-car accident.  The worst damage was inflicted on my brother Allen, who was 3 years old at the time of the car accident.

I was not in the car at the time – I was actually in first grade, attending Clarksville Elementary School (or as I call it, School #2 in my list of 12 educational institutes that I attended from kindergarten to high school).  Unfortunately, because of the horrific nature of the accident, combined with the fact that I was only six years old at the time and didn’t completely grasp such concepts of driving drunk and my brother being gone forever – it was hard to get reliable information on what happened regarding the crash and its aftermath.

A few days ago, I received a package of medical records from Albany Medical Center.  This information proved crucial to telling me what happened to Allen between the time he was brought to the hospital by ambulance – courtesy of the Nassau Rescue Squad – and the few months he spent there, until he was transferred to St. Margaret’s on Hackett Boulevard.

In the notes, I found more information about the accident, information I didn’t previously have, along with what happened to Allen at the hospital.  With much thanks and appreciation to the staff and medical library at Albany Med, I’m finally understanding what happened to Allen during that time period between February and July 1970.

The first major discovery in the medical records was the possible location of the car accident.  The “Emergency Room Record,” a two-page summary document, notes that there was an auto accident at “Lord’s Hills, Nassau.”  I confirmed with my friend Dan Smith (he plays trivia as the captain of Tres Hombres and lives in the area) that there is a Lord Hill Road that runs from Route 20 to Coldwater Tavern Road in Nassau.  According to Google Maps, Lord Hill Road was connected to something called Old US Route 20, and that may have been the “official” US Route 20 in 1970.  Lord Hill Road has a hairpin turn, but I can’t think of any reason why my grandfather would have wanted to go to Coldwater Tavern Road.  It makes more sense that the accident may have occurred at or near the intersection of Route 20 (old or current) and Lord Hill Road.

The injuries Allen suffered were much more severe than I had ever imagined or was told.  Be warned – if you can’t handle the necropsy descriptions in an episode of CSI or Forensic Files, go read another blog right now.

According to the emergency room record, Allen arrived at Albany Med with a severe head injury, open right frontal area and lacerated brain.  This answers another question.  To have a lacerated brain in a car crash, I suspect that Allen wasn’t wearing a safety belt, and that my grandfather was both driving drunk and driving too fast when he lost control of his car and crashed.

Another sad note.  On the day he arrived at Albany Med, Allen’s injuries were so severe that the clergyman on staff, Fr. Noel Murphy, administered Last Rites to my baby brother.

Immediately Allen was taken to the operating room, where emergency surgery was performed.  Doctors gave him a crainiotomy, wound debridment and a right frontal lobectomy.  Allen was in a coma, but doctors noted that he was able to move all four extremities.

Neurosurgery was performed, and the medical notes, as listed by the neurosurgeon at the time, Dr. Bahuleyan, are extremely graphic and I’m not going to repeat them here.  I will note, however, that after the surgery, a tracheostomy was performed and a feeding tube was placed in Allen’s stomach.

The reports say that Allen was discharged from Albany Med on May 12, 1970.  I suspect after that discharge, he was transferred to Sunnyview Hospital, where as the discharge report states, Allen would participate in a physical-medicine rehabilitation regimen.  The report also included two encephalopathy scans which showed gross abnormal brain damage.  Even with all this damage, the hospital reports seemed to note that Allen could possibly have a normal life – albeit one with extremely intense physical therapy requirements.

A month after that, Allen was transferred to St. Margaret’s, as there was no treatment other than the blessing of the Lord that could save him now.  He would not survive the summer.

It’s clearer now what happened on February 20, 1970 – I’m now able to piece together more of the information regarding the car accident, it’s become more real and cognizant.  Without these documents, I could only rely on whatever my family told me about the accident and its aftermath – they told me that Allen was fine until he arrived at Albany Med, and then things went wrong.  And that maybe if I stopped asking about what happened, it would just go away and be forgotten about.

But with the Albany Medical Center documents now in my possession, I can see, 40 years after the fact, that the facility tried – and eventually failed, even with the cutting-edge technology of its time – to keep my baby brother alive.  They did a tremendous job, considering the circumstances.

It’s not like tracking down all this information will bring him back, any more than determining who shot John F. Kennedy will allow the man to return to life and say, “You’re right, you got that right, now let me get back to the White House with all great vigah.”

But what this new information does for me, is it gives me some understanding of what happened to Allen and what was done to keep him alive.

It’s not complete closure.  But it is closer to that point.